Sara Watches Stuff

There are movies with great ingredients that cannot succeed in spite of themselves. 2015's teenage spy rom com Barely Lethal is sadly one of the prime example of that, because for all of the elements that might be deemed watchable or all of the things you might think would make it good, no amount of charisma can pull writing like this out of the garbage. I am not one to over critique teenage girl movies while giving male fantasy a pass. I love Fast & Furious movies shamelessly, but I also will defend teenage girl franchises to the end of time. I can critique the issues with the Twilight movies while finding the vitriol directed at them to be absurd and disproportionate (Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video essay on this topic that I recommend to everyone). There is nothing wrong for making movies for or about teenagers, and there have been some excellent - or even just serviceable - ones in recent years! They can be problematic as all hell, but still elevate their material b...

It's very hard to be fair on Love, Simon  when it is so clearly a coming-of-age movie for teenagers because I want to hold cinema about LGBT youth to such a different standard. That's wrong on my part, because gay film should be allowed to be phenomenal and terrible and also just mediocre. At the same time, as a Vocally Bisexual Woman with my own complicated views surrounding representation and stereotype, I want to see great media about my own story and the stories of my friends and the stories of other people who deserve to see themselves in the things they consume. In many aspects, Love, Simon was successful! As a story of a gay youth working out high school, it is deft in its handling of sexuality and relationships. Sadly, as a teen high school movie, it's more than just awkward. The plot of the movie is not unfamiliar. We're introduced to the eponymous Simon, played by Nick Robinson (not, thankfully, the gross games journalist of the same name), who tells us that...

When Julia Ducournau's Raw   was first released, it gathered a lot of hype thanks to its reputation in regards visceral imagery and pretty confronting cannibalism story. I was worried that I would watch it and be let down, because reviews seemed generally positive and I'm always here for horror tinged plots driven by female directors and female protagonists. On finally watching Raw , I can tell you that it is barely a horror movie and barely a cannibalism movie at all: it is a thinly veiled allegory for burgeoning sexuality alongside themes of sisterhood and coming of age, all wrapped in the skin of cannibal tropes past. I loved it.  The story of Raw is not anything revolutionary. Someone (in this case, a first year vegetarian veterinary student named Justine played by Garance Marillier) gets forced to eat meat, and develops a taste for human flesh. There is nothing subtle in the way it is told - Justine's cravings for meat evoke a sexual awakening and echo her transfo...

I think anyone contemplating watching this movie should go in with the knowledge that if you struggle dealing with second hand embarrassment or any level of cringe comedy, you are going to have trouble .  I genuinely had to take a few breaks from watching this movie.  Hailee Steinfeld is actually believable as a weird kid teenager balancing the complexities of mental health, worsened after the loss of her father, with the minefield of adolescence and high school social warfare. Due to how intensely unlikeable teenagers are, these coming of age movies toe a tricky line, but thankfully the characters a given enough depth that their horribleness feels real and relateable and painful. Like “ oh god, I did something like that, didn’t I?”  painful. I was having a lot of really uncomfortable flashbacks that I'd rather leave alone. The supporting cast varied wildly in successfulness - the standout was absolutely Hayden Szeto as a nerdy clearly-telegraphed-love-interest ...

Taika Waititi is far and away one of my favourite directors working today. He has me contemplating watching a Thor movie, which I never thought would happen. I don't think their are many people working in film with the same grasp of comic direction that he just has. Boy is one of his earlier works , an evolved version of his short film Two Cars, One Night . It's easy to see Waititi's evolution as a filmmaker when you watch this against one of his newer works, but it still has that innate balance of dark and light that seems near effortless. It's got a bit of roughness around the edges that did make this a little bit less of an unabashed joy than What We Do In The Shadows .  That's not to say that this isn’t every bit as much refreshing, simplistic fun as the others - it’s easy to see the spiritual roots of  Hunt for the Wilderpeople  in this - but little things that might have niggled are a little more evident in this, with its slower pacing and scaled down s...